Nearly 500 rock carvings survive on the limestone steps in the Montrose Beach/Montrose Harbor area of Chicago, although many of those along Montrose Beach are buried under encroaching sand. You can click on the map below for a downloadable and interactive set of maps that show the locations of the most interesting carvings in this area. This document is suitable for printing, or you can click on each carving description to see an image of the artwork. Below the map is a gallery showing all the carvings, from north at the dog beach to south, just past the entrance to
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Foster Beach Rock Carvings: How To Find Them
The Foster Beach area is home to more than 600 rock carvings on the limestone blocks that line the shore. This page features a selection of the 200 or so carvings that run from the north end of Foster Beach to Osterman Beach at Hollywood Avenue, and the best of the about 400 carvings that start at the south end of Foster Beach and stretch a bit less than a mile to the Montrose Dog Beach. The carvings north of the beach are among the easiest to see along the Chicago waterfront. The concrete deck at the base of the
Continue readingThe Lost Rock Carvings of Montrose Harbor
Montrose Harbor on Chicago’s North Side was once the site of a remarkable set of rock carvings on the limestone blocks that ran down in steps to the water. The large blocks were put in place when the harbor was built in the late 1930s, as they were in locations up and down the Chicago waterfront, and removed when the Montrose Harbor lakefront was rebuilt in the early 2000s. The remarkable carvings — dozens of them — were demolished along with the blocks that hosted them and are lost forever. At that time the lakefront carvings were virtually unknown in
Continue readingMorgan Shoal Carvings: How to Find Them
The section of Chicago’s shoreline that abuts Morgan Shoal in Hyde Park is home to more than 1,100 rock carvings made over the last 90+ years by mostly anonymous creators. These include the city’s earliest dated carvings, back to 1930. This stretch of shore, from around Hyde Park Boulevard to 45th Street, is also the most deteriorated, with the old limestone revetments that once protected the parkland in a state of disrepair or, in some places, disappearance. But hundreds of carvings are still findable by the intrepid searcher, at least for now. The city has funded a major reconstruction of
Continue readingThe Rainbow Beach Carvings
The revetment and jetty at the south end of Rainbow Beach and adjacent to the northeast corner of the Sawyer Water Plant host more than 700 rock carvings, many made by lifeguards in the 1950s and 60s. These carvings represent a rich record of summer life at the beach as well as including a number of significant individual works of art. It’s also the location with the largest number of identifiable carvers. These galleries feature highlights from the Rainbow Beach carvings. Read the Chicago Lakeshore Art Story
Continue readingThe Morgan Shoal And La Rabida Rock Carvings
Many of Chicago’s oldest lakefront carvings are on the badly deteriorated revetments along Morgan Shoal in Hyde Park. The more than 1,000 carvings there, between 45th and 50th Streets in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, are in imminent danger of being lost. This section of lakefront is in terrible condition, with many of the old rocks topsy turvy and falling into the lake. The condition of the revetments is such that they cannot be rehabilitated, but that does not mean the rocks and their carvings must be abandoned. The city is proceeding with a project to rebuild and expand the shoreline here,
Continue readingA Joe “40,000” Murphy Update
I believe the first content I posted to this Web site was a piece about Joe “40,000” Murphy, the Chicago usher who created an art environment inside his South Side house and nearby five-car garage. That was in 1994, not long after I had acquired more than 700 pieces of art previously salvaged from Murphy’s property in anticipation of its sale. Murphy had died in 1979. Bits and pieces of the work have been exhibited in the years since then, most notably at Randolph Street Gallery in 1994, Aron Packer Gallery in 1997 (both Chicago) and in a traveling show
Continue readingReview: The Tom Patterson Years
The Tom Patterson Years: Cultural Adventures of a Fledgling Scribe, by Tom Patterson. Hiding Press/Jargon, 208 pages, 10 pages of photographs, 2021. ISBN 9781733709897. Paperback, $18 If you follow the literature of the folk/outsider/self-taught art field, then you know the name of Tom Patterson. He wrote the definitive book about Eddie Owens Martin/St. EOM and Pasaquan, and, with John Turner, the first major book about Howard Finster, among other achievements. Now he’s written a memoir that includes numerous interesting anecdotes from his encounters with Martin, Finster and other figures from the world of folk and outsider art, including the folklore professor
Continue readingJack Barker’s Metal Art Fantasyland
I don’t love junk metal art. The idea of turning scrap into art is usually better than the results. But occasionally a maker brings enough imagination and creativity to the work that it transcends its lawn-ornament origins. Tom Every and his epic Forevertron in Wisconsin is one of the more famous examples of this. Jack Barker, whose metal art filled his Essex, Illinois, yard, did not work on Every’s monumental scale — physically or conceptually — but his creations were if anything weirder than Dr. Evermore’s. Barker’s use of materials could be disconcerting, as could his imagery. The ways he
Continue readingWorld’s Largest Small-Town Collection of Big Things
Little Casey, Illinois, is in possession of a number of world’s largest things as certified by Guinness, which requires largest things to be at least theoretically functional. Accordingly, in addition to its largest things, the town also boasts quite a few just large things, which are at least as cool as the largest things even if not putatively functional. Why all the big things? A brilliant idea, it seems, to draw tourists to a small town of no particular distinction in the middle of downstate Illinois. And it works. We were there on an October Tuesday afternoon and there were
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